


Stone on the Water

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sees the scar on his birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone on the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ May 28, 2010.

The cherry blossoms are blooming, though there are only a few in the shop. There are more outside, but for the obvious reasons they make do with the few they can watch from Watanuki’s porch. It happens when Watanuki goes to pour more tea for Himawari, cup outstretched, nimble hands holding the teapot.  
  
Himawari inhales sharply, back stiffening as the sleeve of Yuuko’s kimono slips slightly over Watanuki’s wrist, revealing a long, jagged scar stretching from his thumbnail down to mid-forearm.   
  
“Watanuki-kun?” she asks, her voice far away, eyes widening slightly.   
  
He looks to where she is looking and then looks up again, perhaps somewhat guilty. “Ah… it’s nothing.”  
  
He sets the teapot down and pulls the sleeve back over his wrist, smiling, strained. Himawari is still staring where the red line was before, hidden now by fabric.  
  
There is a long pause, in which it isn’t clear if Himawari is even breathing. And then she says, “Are you alright?”   
  
“It didn’t hurt,” Watanuki says, smiling apologetically. “It isn’t nearly as bad as it looks.”  
  
He continues to smile at Himawari, closing his eyes so she will not see the way they flicker. Himawari stares down at his hands for a long moment, then grasps her own together and folds them in her lap, a fallacy of calm. Doumeki sees the way Himawari smiles, now. Usually, they are smooth as water, perfectly formed and infallible. Now, he can see the lines, where it seems almost possible to pull away and get at what is beneath this new girl she’s created. She smiles until the edges seem to crack.   
  
“That’s good,” she says, softly, looking down and picking her teacup up again, saying nothing more.   
  
“Oi,” Doumeki says and Watanuki looks up sharply. “I want sake.”   
  
“You damned lush,” Watanuki says, though his words don’t offer as much venom as the words might have invited at one point. He casts a worried look at Himawari, but Himawari is smiling at him, so bright that the corners of her eyes crinkle as she lifts the teacup to her lips. She lowers her eyes before closing them, smiling around the lip of the cup. “Well,” Watanuki says with an aggravated sigh that is only partially overly dramatic. “I suppose I have an extra bottle.”  
  
He stands, and Mokona, excited for more sake, jumps onto his shoulder to accompany him as he disappears back into the house. Doumeki and Himawari sit in silence. She bows her head again, so that he will not see her face, but Tanpopo is tugging on a string of her hair, not chirping—and the little bird always seemed to reflect her mood.  
  
When she raises her head again, she is smiling still, and Doumeki wants to tell her to stop, and does not. He frowns.  
  
“It wasn’t because of you,” he says.  
  
Himawari’s smile quivers, her eyes staring at somewhere above Doumeki’s head, distant. Undoubtedly, in her head, she is thinking of all the ways she is poison, all the ways she is flawed and jagged, like a scar that will not heal.   
  
“I know,” she says. “Since I only see him once a year…”  
  
“It happened a few weeks ago,” Doumeki says, watching the way she thumbs at her cup, waiting for it to crack. “The scar will heal.”  
  
“Even so…” Himawari whispers, keeping her head bowed. “I don’t want…”  
  
Whatever it is she doesn’t want, she does not say. She trails off and does not say anything. Tanpopo tugs at her hair again and she strokes his head absently, before her hand quivers and she drops it away, staring at the woodwork of the shop’s porch. Doumeki chances a glance at the door, wondering how long until Watanuki returns.  
  
Himawari’s shoulders shake once and he turns his attention back to her. She lifts her hands and presses the base of her palms against her eyes, as if trying to force the tears back inside her, to bottle herself out, to keep any of her poison from touching anything he might touch, even the innocuous drops on the woodwork.   
  
“I don’t want him to be hurt,” she says, and she seems too fragile in those moments, and it does not suit her—it does not suit her to look as if she would break apart at any moment when he knew that no matter how hard it got, she would refuse to shatter. But the stress presses against her, squeezes and stretches her. But she does not want to break, like a bottle, and let everything break away into the world.   
  
“I know,” he says and wishes he had the words to say more.   
  
He lifts a hand, as if to touch her, and knows she will flinch away even before he sets his hand on her shoulder. She stiffens up, drops her hand and stares at him, watery smile pressed against her face, unnatural and jagged. She shifts her body away, staring at the door as if expecting Watanuki to appear and shout at Doumeki for making Himawari cry. But it is never Doumeki that makes Himawari cry.  
  
“Sorry,” is all she says.   
  
“Don’t,” he says.   
  
She draws in a shaky breath and waits a few more moments before the tears disappear. She smiles again, and again he can see the edges to it, the places where it would be so easy to press and see what she really is.   
  
She touches her back, briefly, a nervous habit she’d acquired ever since the accident. It is subtle, something Doumeki only sees because he knows to look for it. When she’s nervous or uncomfortable, just so briefly, her hand would lift and touch her shoulder or the back of her neck, as if checking to make sure the physical something that keeps her tethered to them hasn’t disappeared from her, to reassure her that, yes, Watanuki was still there, somewhere.   
  
“I don’t want him to be hurt,” she says again. “I don’t want him to have to bare scars.”  
  
“I know,” he says.   
  
They wait for Watanuki to come back.


End file.
